The Pittsburgh Penguins suffered a 5-3 loss to the New York Islanders on Wednesday, but Evgeni Malkin did improve his chances of winning the Hart Trophy by reaching the 100-point mark. You can check out the play below.

Malkin has missed seven games this season, but no one is even close to him in terms of points. That being said, Tampa Bay’s Steven Stamkos and Rangers goaltender Henrik Lundqvist could both give him a run for his money in the Hart Trophy vote.

Tonight’s goal ups Malkin’s league-leading points total to 55, which is especially impressive because he’s played in just 40 games. (Current runner-up Henrik Sedin has 52 points in 47 contests.) You can break up Geno’s recent work into scary-good chunks, but I’d say going back to Nov. 20 is a solid idea:

Malkin in the last 27 games: 20 goals, 21 assists for 41 points with a +10 rating and 132 shots on goal. Most recently, Malkin has eight goals and 10 points in his last six contests.

Seriously, Malkin scored 1.5 points per game in the playoffs that year.

Looking at the numbers, it’s clear that Malkin is approaching the level that some worried he’d never reach again after he struggled a bit with fatigue and injuries 2009-10 and 2010-11. Then again, context – minus Sidney Crosby, plus James Neal – could prompt some to believe that he’s at a new level of excellence.

However his work stacks up to his greatest hits, most hockey fans have been delighted to watch Malkin return to his superhuman form of old – unless he’s rumbling down the ice against their own team.

For several years, Pavel Datsyuk was considered something of a hockey connoisseur’s Hart Trophy pick. Despite scoring at a great rate in just about every season, he always seemed resigned to settle for a Selke Trophy because Datsyuk fell a few strides short of being a top scorer.

It seemed that would happen again this season, but all of a sudden the ludicrously slick forward is making a meteoric rise up the scoring ranks, as Ansar Khan discusses here.

With 11 goals and 30 assists in his last 30 games, Datsyuk’s 51 overall points ties him with Steven Stamkos and Joffrey Lupul for third place overall in the NHL.

The Sedin twins and Evgeni Malkin will surely give Datsyuk everything he can handle in the Art Ross Trophy race, but considering his fantastic two-way play and eye-grabbing style, one cannot help but wonder if he’ll finally get serious Hart consideration from the guys who cast the ballots.

There are plenty of awards to shoot for in the NHL, but the Hart Trophy is easily the biggest. It’s the league’s MVP award, so reading its list of winners is a quick guide to the players who sat atop the NHL in a given season.

The NHL announced the top three nominees for the 2010-11 season: Anaheim Ducks winger Corey Perry, Vancouver Canucks forward Daniel Sedin and Martin St. Louis of the Tampa Bay Lightning. Here’s a quick rundown of their superlative seasons.

Perry: No doubt about it, Perry had the hottest second half of any player in the NHL, scoring 19 goals in his final 16 games. The divisive Ducks winger was the only person to reach the 50-goal plateau this season, earning himself the Maurice Richard Trophy in the process. One interesting category that sets him apart from Daniel Sedin – his main competition for the MVP trophy – is time on ice. Perry was second among forwards with an average of 22:18 minutes on ice, including 1:38 of shorthanded time. That’s almost four more minutes per game than Sedin’s 18:38 total and six seconds of shorthanded time per game.

If you judge value by how much a player is used, Perry wins that margin by a substantial amount.

Sedin: Perry has his pluses, but Sedin’s +30 was the second highest plus/minus total among NHL forwards. He also lead the NHL in the all-important points category, taking home the Art Ross Trophy with 104 points (five more than St. Louis and six more than Perry). He was also the best player on the best team in the NHL. The question is: will voters allow him to match his twin Henrik Sedin, who won the Hart last season (as you can see from this post’s main photo, by the way)?

St. Louis: The Lightning’s pint-sized star is the dark horse of this race, but that shouldn’t camouflage another outstanding season by St. Louis. He finished second in the league in scoring with 99 points, getting stronger while his much-ballyhooed linemate Steven Stamkos sagged. That’s the thing about St. Louis, though. While Tampa Bay hits peaks and valleys, he’s almost always a world-class player and person.

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So now that you’re caught up to speed about the three finalists, tell us which player you think is most deserving. Should it be the polarizing (and pulverizing) force in Perry, the scoring leader in Sedin or the undersized brilliance of St. Louis? Let us know by voting in the poll and sharing your thoughts in the comments.

Not all of the NHL’s regular season awards are handed out after a red carpet ceremony in Las Vegas after the Stanley Cup final is over and done with. Some of them are decided thanks to the statistics acquired during the regular season rather than put to a vote and the Vancouver Canucks are already picking up a lot of hardware.

Daniel Sedin secured the Art Ross Trophy as the NHL’s top scorer completing his season with 104 points. Sedin finished five points ahead of Tampa Bay’s Martin St. Louis and six points ahead of Anaheim’s Corey Perry. Sedin finished the year with 41 goals and 63 assists and figures to be a Hart Trophy finalist after helping lead the Canucks to the Presidents’ Trophy.

Sedin is the tenth different player to win the Art Ross Trophy in the last ten years. After so many years of seeing the likes of Jaromir Jagr, Mario Lemieux, and Wayne Gretzky dominate year after year, parity isn’t just for the standings anymore.

Sedin’s Canucks teammates Roberto Luongo and Cory Schneider took home the Jennings Trophy as the NHL’s top goaltending tandem. The pair of goalies allowed just 185 goals this season, the best mark in the league. It’s the first time any goaltenders from Vancouver have won the award and it speaks to the defensive dominance we’ve seen out of the Canucks this season. With all the goals they’re scoring and preventing, it’s easy to see why the Canucks are the favorites to win the Stanley Cup. Oddly enough Luongo isn’t being mentioned very much at all for Vezina Trophy consideration. With 38 wins and a 2.11 goals against average with a .928 save percentage, he should at least get considered.

Corey Perry’s huge season scoring 50 goals was good enough to get him the Rocket Richard Trophy as the league’s top goal scorer. Perry’s outburst in the final two months of the season in willing the Ducks into the playoffs and the fourth seed in the Western Conference carried him up the goal rankings and flying past Steve Stamkos on his way to being the NHL’s lone 50 goal scorer. Perry finished five goals ahead of Stamkos while Jarome Iginla was seven back with 43 goals.

All of these players will get to continue making their presence felt in the playoffs as the Canucks are the top seed in the West and the Ducks are the fourth seed. Whether we see them take home more awards will have to wait until the end of June.